Webroot Web Shield

Some of you may have noticed a green check mark showing to the left of any website on search results. This is actually a new feature released by Webroot.

Webroot is the Antivirus software that runs on your computer keeping it safe from viruses, malware, etc. Recently they released a new feature on the business application called Web Shield that integrates a few different layers to help keep you safe while searching the internet. Websites you travel to will now be evaluated against the very large Webroot database of websites. Webroot categorizes all the websites on the internet and determines whether they are safe. Webroot will then use this information to determine if a website is known to spread viruses, is a phishing website, contains malware, etc., and will prevent you from being able to visit it.

In addition to blocking, while searching Webroot now shows the safety rating of all the websites brought up in the search results. When you search for a particular topic using Google, Bing or Yahoo, the list of websites returned to you will have an icon to the left of it depicting the safety score. Below is what each rating represents (Figure 1). At any point, you can hover over the safety rating (Figure 2 and 3).